Best bets
1.5pts each-way Patrick Cantlay @ 11/1
1.5pts each-way Bubba Watson @ 33/1
1.5pts each-way Hideki Matsuyama @ 22/1
1pt each-way Adam Scott @ 40/1
1pt each-way Justin Thomas @ 14/1
0.5pts each-way Robert MacIntyre @ 125/1
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We’re paying SEVEN places at the Genesis Invitational!
What an Oscar-worthy story the Riviera Country Club, the golfing home of Hollywood legends, has to tell as it prepares to host, for the 59th time, the tournament that started as the LA Open and now goes by the name of Genesis Invitational.
Just a block away from fabled Sunset Boulevard, the highlights reel of this richest week of the PGA Tour calendar to date would make a thrilling movie. As a 16-year-amateur, Tiger Woods played in his first tour event there 30 years ago, missing the cut. Jack Nicklaus picked his first paycheck there 60 years ago – $33.33 for tying for 50th place. Ben Hogan, like the first two, the greatest golfer of his era, won so often there, three LA Opens and the 1948 US Open, they called it ‘Hogan’s Alley’.
Three great movies filmed their golf scenes there, Pat And Mike, The Caddy and the Hogan biopic Follow The Sun, Humphrey Bogart has the sycamore tree on the 12th that he used to sit and watch under named after him, and the notorious OJ Simpson was playing his usual foursome there on the morning of the 1994 when his ex-wife and her friend were brutally murdered.
The NFL star turned actor was eventually found responsible for both killings. He is still a golf nut but no longer welcome at plush, traditional Riviera.
Now this week Tiger is back but as tournament host, sadly a non-playing one, as 120 golfers, including every one of the world’s top ten, vie for a share of the $12m booty, massively boosted from last year’s $9.3m.
For the winner that share will be a stunning $2.16m, a sum Sahith Theegala could only dream about when he teed off as a barely- known invitee at last week’s Phoenix Open.
Yet third place there in front of the biggest, noisiest crowd in golf, 800,000 of them during the week, after leading the mightiest names of the game a merry dance for 70 holes, has made this 24-year-old Californian who still lives at his Indian parents’ home a folk hero.
And though his $434,000 prize meant he could have flown up in style to Pacific Palisades for the Genesis, modest Sahith chose the six-hour drive in his Volkswagen Passat.
His thrilling short game and loose-as-a-goose attitude even in the unaccustomed final threeball role alongside two modern-day greats won him a host of new fans and it was a drive through the green and into the drink at the tempting 71st hole that cost him a place in the play-off won by first-timer Scottie Scheffler over luckless Patrick Cantlay.
One thing’s certain: Sahith won’t be starting at 225/1 again for a long time but if you fancy another Theegala fairytale at Riviera, Fitzdares will lay you 100/1. It’s a massive ask given such an elite field but stranger things have happened.
While we’re hoping Tiger will tell us he’s going to play in the 150th Open at St Andrews in July, the new boy will be hoping to play his first part in the storied history of Riviera. Sahith Theegala, not an easy name to remember but don’t forget it. He will be winning us all much gold down the line.
If there is to be a three-figure winner, try closer to home with the ambitious young Scot Robert MacIntyre. Like Theegala last week, he’s there by invitation along with Belgian bomber Thomas Pieters, the Abu Dhabi winner. ‘Bobby Mac’, as they call him, doesn’t have Pieters’ credentials but there are good reasons for expecting a big show.
First, he’s a lefty and southpaws have a great record at Riviera. Seven of the 21 tournaments there this century have gone to left-handers, three to Bubba Watson, two apiece to Mike Weir and Phil Mickelson – and Phil has also been in two losing play-offs there. It’s the way many of the holes fit their eye.
Considering only around five per cent of PGA tourists are lefties, a 33% strike-rate is remarkable. Whatever the reason, results show left-handers are to be feared at Riviera and Augusta, another happy-hunting ground for Phil, Bubba and Weir.
Don’t forget that it was on first sight of Augusta, MacIntyre produced his best US performance in finishing 12th, so having no previous experience of Riviera shouldn’t bother him as long as the favourite driver he cracked in the UAE last week has been repaired to his satisfaction. It was the reserve driver at the weekend which cost him a better finish than tenth – more a mental problem than a physical one, as he later admitted.
Pieters, impressive at Abu Dhabi last month, might also be a live outsider as he showed a liking for Riviera when runner-up there to Dustin Johnson five years ago. And he’s a happy camper in the States as he was the star of the team there in his only Ryder Cup.
Another long-priced European with an each-way shout – Fitzdares are paying out on seven places – is the now California-based Francesco Molinari, a top-ten finisher 12 months ago and having started this year encouragingly.
Last year’s winner, the underrated Max Homa, will attempt to be the first to go back-to-back since Mickelson in 2008-9, but, well though he has played since, including a second victory at the Fortinet, it is a mountain to climb.
World No. 1 Jon Rahm, who somehow crept into the top ten at Scottsdale without ever getting into contention, heads the market but although he was a fair fifth last year, he has never threatened to take apart the 7322-yard par 71 which will host the golf when the Olympics go to LA in 2028.
The course’s big features are the clingy Kikuyu rough – so straight driving in key – and the freak short sixth which has a bunker slap-bang in the middle of the green.
If you are looking for horses for courses, then forty-somethings Watson and Adam Scott are your men. And both are enjoying a bit of a renaissance.
Watson, the only triple Riviera champion in the field, bounced back to his best when runner-up in Saudi and was hard on the heels of the leaders for most of the way last week.
Scott’s last victory came at Riviera two years ago when taming a line-up featuring Rahm and Rory McIlroy and he loves the place, not least because he got full pay for his “unofficial” victory there in 2005 when torrential rain turned Riviera into a swamp.
That reduced the tournament to 36 holes, or 37 in Scott’s case as he had to go to a Monday play-off before seeing off Chad Campbell, but the Aussie has shone there regularly, finishing runner-up to Bubba in 2016 before finally nailing an “official” win four years later.
And he’s started his revised schedule with top-tens in the Middle East and a fair-enough Phoenix on his first US start of the year.
Hideki Matsuyama also holds strong course credentials on top of compelling recent form, having followed victory in Hawaii with a solid tenth in Arizona. Top-ten Riviera finishes in 2015-19-20 mark the Masters champion down as a threat to the best.
Having got a monkey off his back, Scheffler is no longer a nearly man and will be playing with greater freedom while Cantlay’s compelling 4-9-4-2 start to the year, shooting 75 under par for 16 rounds, must make him the each-way punt, even ahead of the consistent Rahm, another big name desperate for a first W of the campaign.
Fourth to Watson at Riviera in 2018, reigning Player of the Year Cantlay is an even more polished operator now. Letting one get away on Sunday will be seen as a negative but this cool guy looks unflappable and it could be fifth time lucky. As the man who picked up 15K as FedEx Cup winner in September, one thing that won’t be worrying him is the money.
In his home state Morikawa would love to win but not all his recent play, particularly on the greens, has impressed. DJ hasn’t had a top-ten since September (but has barely played), Koepka looked well short of his mighty best under the gun at Scottsdale and while McIlroy has gone well in the past, a win has eluded him.
With Viktor Hovkand and Jordan Spieth misfiring last week and last year’s play-off victim Tony Finau out of form, finding the solution isn’t easy.
Xander Schauffele, only a shot out of Sunday’s play-off, has to be short-listed but Cantlay, Matsuyama and 2019 runner-up Justin Thomas, who finished well for eighth last week, look the pick of those at the top of the market.
I shall put that trio with Watson, Scott and best longshot MacIntyre to shine in this week’s only live golf on Sky, the Indian Open on the DP World Tour having had to be scrapped owing to Covid restrictions.
Clear skies with temperatures around 20C are forecast. Nothing new there!
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